Tata Steel 5: Firouzja beats Giri for 3rd win

16-year-old Alireza Firouzja hit straight back to join
Wesley So in the Tata Steel Masters lead after luring Anish Giri into a lost
pawn ending in their first ever classical game. That was Firouzja's third win
in this year's event, with Vishy Anand the only other player to pick up a full
point as he took down Jeffery Xiong. Magnus Carlsen confessed he had to
"grovel" for a draw against Daniil Dubov, while Caruana-Van Foreest
and Duda-Artemiev were terrific slugfests that nevertheless ended peacefully.

Alireza Firouzja is the only player to win three games in the Tata Steel Masters this year after playing in the PSV stadium in Eindhoven did nothing to upset his rhythm | photo: Tata Steel Chess Facebook

You can replay all the games and check out the pairings for
the Tata Steel Masters using the selector below:

And here's the day's live commentary from Peter Svidler and
Jan Gustafsson:

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Firouzja takes down Giri

It was easy to imagine that Alireza Firouzja’s loss to Wesley So in Round 4 would see the 16-year-old
return to earth after a brilliant start, but this kid is in a hurry. We noted
earlier that 16-year-old Magnus Carlsen lost 4 games and won 0 when he made his
debut in the top group in Wijk aan Zee in 2007, while Firouzja started his
debut with a win. Now we can make another (slightly spurious!) comparison:
Magnus Carlsen lost his first ever classical game to 16-year-old Anish Giri in Wijk aan Zee in 2011 and
didn’t level the score against the Dutchman until the 2016 Bilbao Masters.
Firouzja has once again won at his very first attempt!

Anish Giri had scouted the PSV stadium in the run-up to the tournament, but it didn't help | photo: Tata Steel Chess Facebook

In the last 6 editions of the Tata Steel Masters from 2014
to 2019 Giri has lost just 4 games out of the 76 he’s played, and he’d also gotten
off to a very decent start in this year’s Tata Steel Masters:

The game against Firouzja initially looked to be going well
for Giri as well, while Peter Svidler commented of the position after 30…Be3 appeared on the board:

Here we enter a bit of a strange sequence of events, because
objectively Black is not worse at all here. There are really no problems for
Black to solve in terms of the "mathematical evaluation of the
position", but I'm pretty sure that Alireza continued playing this
position for a win, and at some point he managed to convince Anish that Anish
should play this position passively for a draw.

Giri later exchanged off minor pieces for what appeared to
be a simple draw, but it turned out his last two moves before the time control
were fatal mistakes, enabling Alireza to force a pawn ending that was winning
for White. The 16-year-old himself pinpointed the critical moment:

I think it was winning because of this 46.a4! I played. a4 was a very important move, because I should
play active, because if he puts the pawn on a4 it’s equal.

The way Alireza went on to win was “absolutely spotless”
(Svidler) but he was keeping his feet firmly on the ground afterwards,
commenting, “I’m not really thinking about winning this thing,” and adding:

I think I have the same confidence as at the start of the
tournament, so I’m not expecting a lot from myself. I just want to make some
good moves and we’ll see.

Don’t miss Peter Svidler’s in-depth analysis of what he
calls a “very, very impressive game” by the youngster:

Anand grabs the day’s only other win in the Masters

In just five rounds of the Tata Steel Masters we’ve already seen
Firouzja, Jorden van Foreest and Vladislav Artemiev bounce back after losses,
and now 50-year-old Vishy Anand has
become the latest player to hit back, after he lost in Round 2. In the post-game
interview he noted that he’d last been in Eindhoven 22 years ago for a training
camp with Peter Leko, which is three years before his Round 5 opponent, Jeffery
Xiong, was even born.

Jeffery gets full points for bravery after playing the
Winawer French against the 5-time World Champion, but Vishy showed that he knew
exactly what he was doing:

Vishy went for the most aggressive 17.g4! to break up the black position and retained that initiative,
even if afterwards he wasn’t convinced by his own play:

The only moment I was really happy was when I played c4.
There I felt that the tactics were all working out for me, but before that I
wasn’t sure if I’d lost the plot a little bit or not.

The tactics do indeed work for White. Jeffery picked the
best defence, 31…Rg4 32.cxd5 Rxd4+
33.Bxd4, but the spectacular 33…Qxc2+
34.Kxc2 Nxd4+ 35.Kd3 Nxe2 36.Kxe2 only left him with a dead-lost rook
endgame that Vishy went on to win without any trouble:

Here he is after the game:

Five draws, amazingly!

Of the remaining games it was only Kovalev-So that ended quickly after bottom-placed Vladislav Kovalev
was happy to get an uneventful Berlin draw against the sole leader. Wesley also
had no complaints, since he was happy not to wait until 8 in the evening for
the 2-hour return journey from the PSV Eindhoven football stadium to Wijk aan
Zee. In the post-game interview he demonstrated that football wasn’t exactly
his game: “I have no idea what the strategy is to score a goal!”

The other games could easily all have ended decisively. Nikita Vitiugov missed a chance before
a 24-move draw against Yu Yangyi, while
there was mayhem on the other boards. For instance, Vladislav Artemiev decided to trust his fellow 21-year-old Jan-Krzysztof Duda’s 24.Rg4!?

In fact Black would be winning after 24…fxg4!, while
after 24…Bf6?! 25.Ng5! Duda’s
tactics were working and it was White who had any winning chances before the
game finally ended in what this time was a drawn pawn ending.

Jorden van Foreest’s
bold opening play has gone well so far in the Tata Steel Masters, but
repeating the line that saw Alexander Grischuk get crushed in 24 moves by David
Anton in last year’s Grand Swiss backfired.

Jorden must have been ready for Fabiano Caruana to repeat Anton’s 10.d4, but Fabi picked 10.dxe4, with Jorden commenting:

Yeah, actually I knew it existed, I just totally didn’t
repeat this variation before the game at all and then over the board it’s very
hard to find the correct moves.

Jorden blundered on move 13 and it was already a case of
Caruana trying to find a knockout blow, though the hour he spent on moves 15-17
made it clear how tough that was.

The moment things finally slipped away seems to have been on
move 19:

That the computer gives Black’s best response to 19.h3! here
as 19…Rg8!?, tells you almost everything you need to know about how strong
that little pawn move is. Why is it so strong? One reason is that the immediate
19.Qa3 is well met by 19…Qe7!, and Black is better. But after, for instance,
19.h3 Nf6 and now 20.Qa3! Qe7 White is winning with 21.Rc3! and the threat of
22.Re3.

In the game Fabiano instead played 19.Rc4 and after 19…Rg8!
20.Qa3 Black was able to escape with the ugly-looking 20…Kg7! Soon Black had an extra piece for three pawns and,
according to the computer, a healthy advantage, but it was understandable that
Jorden accepted his opponent’s draw offer.

As he explained:

I was already very happy to get away with a draw, to be
honest, after what happened in the opening. Also, I’m not sure how much better
I am in the end, but yeah, to be honest I was just very happy not to lose this
game.

That leaves Carlsen-Dubov,
where the obvious script would have seen Magnus Carlsen return to crushing the
Tata Steel Masters field. He was fresh from scoring four goals in an 8:5 win in
the rest-day football and was free from the albatross around his neck of the
unbeaten streak, so the handbrake could be released.

…or because he was facing his second Daniil Dubov and had to
do some dodging in the opening when they played the Rossolimo Sicilian they’d
worked on heavily for the match against Caruana, things didn’t exactly go to
plan.

Both players agreed, however, that the real problem was “one
extremely bad move” (Carlsen), or as Dubov put it:

Basically we both felt that he played like an idiot, which
is probably true!

That move was 17.Nc4?!
Magnus explained:

Most of these lines I’m aiming to get the knight to c4 so I
played it without thinking much, but clearly it needed to go to f1 in that case,
and I think if I do 17.Nf1 I just have a very pleasant position, not much
better, but definitely very, very playable and with every chance of winning the
game.

After 17.Nc4 Qe6! Magnus
sank into thought and, yet again this year, decided to make what he described
as not an offensive but a defensive pawn sacrifice: 18.Qb3!? fxe4 19.Nfd2 exd3 20.cxd3 e4! 21.Nxe4 Bxc4 22.Qxc4:

At this point our commentary team felt Daniil was getting a
bit too clever when instead of regaining the extra pawn with 22…Qxc4 23.dxc4
Bxb2 he played 22…Qd5, but later
Magnus admitted to missing another move (28…Rd5!)
and found himself giving up the pawn anyway. The World Champion held on, but it
wasn’t pretty: “I had to grovel for a draw, so that was a bit embarrassing
again”. He also described his overall play this year as, “massively depressing”,
even if being on 50% with 8 rounds to go is a far from desperate situation:

In Round 6 Magnus can try to kick start his tournament with
White against a certain Fabiano Caruana, though Daniil had some words of advice
for the World Champion’s rivals:

I think in general people tend to overestimate him. He’s
probably the best player in history, but still it doesn’t mean you cannot beat
him. And all the streaks and everything – he’s obviously a brilliant player,
but it’s also related to the fact that not too many people try to beat him,
especially when he’s White.

Here are the standings after Round 5, with Alireza Firouzja
having caught Wesley So in the lead, a point ahead of Magnus:

Two new leaders in the Challengers

While the Masters group was away in Eindhoven the
Challengers ensured there was plenty of action back in Wijk aan Zee as only one
game was drawn in Round 5:

That game involved the sole leader Surya Ganguly, so that Pavel
Eljanov and Erwin l’Ami were
able to catch him with wins over Anton
Smirnov and Dinara Saduakassova.
Special mention goes to Jan Smeets,
who picked up his second win of the event by delivering mate on the board
against Rauf Mamedov.

The teams for the rest-day football - all the players are back in Wijk aan Zee again on Friday | photo: Tata Steel Chess

The Masters group returns to Wijk aan Zee and the normal
starting time of 13:30 CET on Friday and while all eyes will be on
Carlsen-Caruana the leaders may fancy their chances of winning again. Firouzja
has Black against the struggling Yu Yangyi while So is White against Duda.

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